We're not MAKING carbon, we're taking the carbon from Glucose and releasing it as Carbon Dioxide as a waste product of cellular respiration.

First law of Thermodynamics: Matter can be neither created nor destroyed.

Actually..... the First Law of Thermodynamics is that ENERGY can't be created or destroyed, but I understand what you mean. Unfortunately, I assumed this was obvious and that I could substitute "carbon" for "carbon dioxide" without losing anyone. Humans make, release, liberate, cause to be emitted.... huge quantities of carbon dioxide. Since carbon dioxide absorbs infrared radiation and thus warms the atmosphere, it would be very surprising if our emissions did not cause some warming.

Add to this the fact that the global surface temperatures ARE in fact rising and you have reason for concern. Add to that the fact that we will eventually run out of fossil fuel (and that it will get very expensive long before we run totally out) and you have a reason to begin moving to renewable sources of energy. Add to that the fact that most of our fossil fuel comes from unstable and hostile parts of the planet and you have reason to move as quickly as possible to wind and solar for environmental, economic, and national security benefits.

Add to this the fact that the global surface temperatures ARE in fact rising and you have reason for concern. Add to that the fact that we will eventually run out of fossil fuel (and that it will get very expensive long before we run totally out) and you have a reason to begin moving to renewable sources of energy. Add to that the fact that most of our fossil fuel comes from unstable and hostile parts of the planet and you have reason to move as quickly as possible to wind and solar for environmental, economic, and national security benefits.

assuming the temp has gone up, and that is debatable, why do we need to be concerned. it has happened before. it has been colder before.how do you know that we are running out of fossil fuel?importing as much oil as we do, is a problem. it is a national security risk if nothing else. i think we should drill more and faster. we can have our own :-) maybe we could even export!

i have no problem with other forms of energy, but i do object to the government mandating it, paying for it, and forcing it on us. when the market can support it, it will be created. the free market will cause systems to be developed which are cost effective and efficient. the government won't.

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.....The greatest changes occur in their country without their cooperation. They are not even aware of precisely what has taken place. They suspect it; they have heard of the event by chance. More than that, they are unconcerned with the fortunes of their village, the safety of their streets, the fate of their church and its vestry. They think that such things have nothing to do with them, that they belong to a powerful stranger called the government. They enjoy these goods as tenants, without a sense of ownership, and never give a thought to how they might be improved.....

I know a lot of folks who dont want to believe X-or Y due a lot of the "consider the source" stuff - not necessarily an unreasonable caution. having said that there is bound to be flak based soley on who posted the video to You Tube - I actually don't care - it's a video of a reasonable source himself. ...And then of course come the refutations based in (????) over who owns his soul for not toeing the line. etc. etc. etc. - anyway - If I found the right video (I know it's the right guy) He backs his argument with solid science - I know a "conservative" position argued with science - might as well be a monkey writing Shakespere - cuz you know they's somefin fishy about that.' This is part one of 4 so if you want to see the whole thing use the link instead of the window.John Coleman slams global warming (1 of 4)

:-D OMG, HOW DARE YOU BRING THAT KIND OF GARBAGE HERE! DON'T YOU KNOW MAN MADE CLIMATE CHANGE IS AN ACCEPTED FACT! THERE IS NO ROOM FOR THE TRUTH IN THIS DEBATE! ROFLMAO :-D

Seriously dude you must be some kind of sick twisted pervert to believe the truth (or at least that's what I'm told when I try to expose the frauds out there).I say we gather up all the global warming whackjobs and assign them the task of gathering data. Issue them a ruler and deposit them on a convenient deserted island and tell them to measure the tides. LOL

the free market will cause systems to be developed which are cost effective and efficient. the government won't.

Markets are only as good as the information they have. When they have full access to accurate info, they are the most efficient way to allocate resources to advance a particular goal. But markets are not able to decide on goals. That is the role of government.

There is currently no mechanism to provide global warming info to the energy markets. Oil drillers are not responsible for the effects of burning their product. There is no feedback mechanism that lets the market incorporate the cost of global warming. If the price of every barrel of oil reflected the risk that global warming was for real, gas would be more expensive and the market could asymptotically approach the effective solution you mention. But since there is no feedback, oil markets will continue as is until the government intervenes or the temperature of the earth rises to the point that rig workers die from the heat.

Are you getting my point? What will make the market respond to global warming if it is real?

Actually, there are lots of environmental engineers working on and acheiving solutions to remove the CO2 that isnt already filtered out (because there's big bucks in it) one such guy has (developed? - bred?) a fast growing algae that sits in water and had the CO2 rich exhaust bubbled through the water solution - Plant+H2O plus photosynthesis - he gets an algae that absorbs (?) of the CO2 turning it into an edible (horrid) protein rich green slime.While I find the fear of CO2 to be sort of anti-science I think there are/will be plenty of very educated, well trained people who can develop exceptional solutions to the problems -imaginary though they are.

yup, probably a grant to solve a problem that may not actually exist - government symbiosis at it's finest. Although Enviro engineers are pretty well paid by private (sector) companies to solve problems for bigger companies.

Markets are only as good as the information they have. When they have full access to accurate info, they are the most efficient way to allocate resources to advance a particular goal. But markets are not able to decide on goals. That is the role of government.

government may set a goal. that's fine. where govt oversteps is when they manipulate markets to achieve the goal and when they shove regulation down our throats to achieve the goal. the stupid light bulb thing would be one fine example.

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There is currently no mechanism to provide global warming info to the energy markets.

that might be because there is no accurate info? the books have been cooked. why should we trust manipulated data?

the markets respond to the desires and needs of the consumer. if the consumer desires and better light bulb and the market can provide one at a competitive price, the consumer will buy it. if the consumer need a small car because of gas rationing (the 70's) and the market can provide what the consumer want....we have Honda's and Toyota's all over the place.

when the rig drillers drop in the heat, someone will develop a comfortable cooling suit, i'm sure.

you still have not answered my question. IF there is global warming, why is it a bad thing? what would be the perfect temp for the earth? why has the planet survived massive shifts in temp and weather before and survived. and how about this? if this is all caused by nasty man, maybe it's good thing if a few die off? maybe it's the planets way of shedding a parasite.

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.....The greatest changes occur in their country without their cooperation. They are not even aware of precisely what has taken place. They suspect it; they have heard of the event by chance. More than that, they are unconcerned with the fortunes of their village, the safety of their streets, the fate of their church and its vestry. They think that such things have nothing to do with them, that they belong to a powerful stranger called the government. They enjoy these goods as tenants, without a sense of ownership, and never give a thought to how they might be improved.....

"In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the person's becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American...There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag...We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language...And we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people."

hey, i even remember the duck and cover song. who says you can't learn from repetition?

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.....The greatest changes occur in their country without their cooperation. They are not even aware of precisely what has taken place. They suspect it; they have heard of the event by chance. More than that, they are unconcerned with the fortunes of their village, the safety of their streets, the fate of their church and its vestry. They think that such things have nothing to do with them, that they belong to a powerful stranger called the government. They enjoy these goods as tenants, without a sense of ownership, and never give a thought to how they might be improved.....

There is currently no mechanism to provide global warming info to the energy markets.

that might be because there is no accurate info? the books have been cooked. why should we trust manipulated data?

I'm speaking of information in the sense of economic theory. Let's assume for the moment that man-made carbon dioxide is causing terrible global temperature increases that are melting the ice caps, destroying species, and leading to the fall of civilization. By what economic mechanism will the energy market respond to these changes? Environmental damage is an externalized cost that is invisible to the free market. That's why I say that goals have to be set by government, which is not interested only in profit. For example, the most market friendly way government can set a goal for converting to alternative energy is to tax gasoline and coal. Then the market has a way to measure the need to move to alternatives. The information is provided by the differential savings by using the non-taxed energy.

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you still have not answered my question. IF there is global warming, why is it a bad thing? what would be the perfect temp for the earth? why has the planet survived massive shifts in temp and weather before and survived. and how about this? if this is all caused by nasty man, maybe it's good thing if a few die off? maybe it's the planets way of shedding a parasite.

Oh, it may not be bad in the very long run (millions of years) but it is foolish to conduct the experiment on the only planet we have. There are feedback mechanisms that keep the earth in a range suitable for complex lifeforms. If we push the earth out of that range, it will eventually come back into range and some new species will rise to dominance. (ooh, maybe some descendants of the honey bee!) The earth will be just fine, but human civilization will not. And many of these changes will occur in your lifetime, and certainly in the lifetime of your children. Oil is going to run out anyway, so making the switch to carbon neutral energy a few decades early seems a small price to pay for not destroying civilization.

If it is your religious devotion to free markets that pushes you to such extreme views, I would point out that free markets will be an early casualty of the disruption of historic climate patterns. Better to use those markets to make the necessary changes.

The topic of global warming whenever discussed makes me think of something I will get to shortly.odd the manmade warming proponents would approach the topic almost exactly after the fashion a door to door bible thumper would operate down here."well even if you're an athiest, wouldn't it be better to come to my church ($), just in case you are wrong?" with: "well even if you're an athiest 'denier', wouldn't it be better to come to my church 'accept the mandates'($), just in case you are wrong?"I'm not going into the basic science that makes this suspicious to me.Anyway, the mention of "religion" kind of reminded me of some people between 600 and 300 BC, who had some very interesting thoughts.Democritus, Anaxamander, and Anaxagoras - are the top of that list - remember we're talking at and over 23 centuries ago. Democritus thought very deeply on the properties of matter - so deeply that he figured 'there must be something so so tiny that still holds the properties of the element that it is - he even called it an Atom (well over 23 centuries ago). Anaximander - was having a hard think one day and considered that nature adapts and changes - even theorizing that man's ancestors slithered out of the muck an impossibly long time ago - this was 240 decades before Charlie Darwin. Anaxagoras by some reasoning decided that the Earth was a ball of some kind and it circled around the sun, and that maybe the moon circled around the Earth.These guys were convicted of "Impiety" (before christianity) and their theories were suppressed and obscured. Meanwhile Pythagoras was thinking about geometry and his thinktank decided that the doedecahedron was much too dangerous for the general public to run around knowing (this is how some academics perceive themselves, as being smart enough to contain thoughts that would [melt the brains of normal people?]) Pythagoras also got cozy with the ruling bodies and produced decent enough work to be accepted as a darn good authority (Pythagorean work was a "peer review" type society, pythagoras was one man - the pythagoreans were kind of a gemoetry club with way too much pull) - If im not mistaken, the impious heretics who thought up evolution, planetary movement, and the most rudimentary atomic theory were convicted of their heresy in sight of the pythagorean group. (taken from Carl Seagan's "Cosmos" - with other knowledge from courses) My point in that long history babble is that when politicians ally with religions (Earth "worship"/reverence) - very ugly things begin to happen, Objectivity begins to fall by the wayside, and anyone who disagrees with the popular opinion is branded 'impious' albeit today only sentenced to watch everyone else fail to be objective (often a pretty sound punishment). Approaching science with a religious/psuedo-religious flavor has already set us back well over 2000 years; Approaching Global Warming in the same fashion, by dismissing opposing evidence as being something allied with nefarious forces - impious - could damage us further, as it has to our production, manufacturing, and probably competitive innovation. Of course I'm not saying "burn everything, kill the great lakes again" but I am saying, Are you for real?

well, lets see what we have to back your global warming: improperly peer reviewed theory papers. a conspiracy to keep same from proper peer review and a conspiracy to demonzie dissenters. a movie that was rubbish, but caused the church of global warming to pleasure themselves. upside down hockey sticks? improperly placed temp sensors as basis for above papers and theories. UN climate panel that has "made some mistakes" and who's members are abandoning ship, failure to examine other probable causes like solar activity and ocean currents, seas are not rising, (maybe obama did that) ....and last, but certainly not least, a plan to enact global taxes and regulations to combat the (manufactured) crisis.

and the last i think, is the real goal.

a few more greenhouse gasses and maybe my garden will grow next year!

have you considered the cascade effect of raising taxes on carbon fuels? we already have inflation. it's bound to get worse. we may never get our backsides out of this ditch, so what the heck...lets just pile on some more!

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.....The greatest changes occur in their country without their cooperation. They are not even aware of precisely what has taken place. They suspect it; they have heard of the event by chance. More than that, they are unconcerned with the fortunes of their village, the safety of their streets, the fate of their church and its vestry. They think that such things have nothing to do with them, that they belong to a powerful stranger called the government. They enjoy these goods as tenants, without a sense of ownership, and never give a thought to how they might be improved.....

Approaching science with a religious fervor has already set us back well over 2000 years

gave us neat stuff like smart phones.....but....there again is that whole profit thing....

seriously though, science builds on science. when an idea is before it's time, it rarely can stand alone. it gets pitched into the sorting basket until the foundations catch up with it.

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.....The greatest changes occur in their country without their cooperation. They are not even aware of precisely what has taken place. They suspect it; they have heard of the event by chance. More than that, they are unconcerned with the fortunes of their village, the safety of their streets, the fate of their church and its vestry. They think that such things have nothing to do with them, that they belong to a powerful stranger called the government. They enjoy these goods as tenants, without a sense of ownership, and never give a thought to how they might be improved.....